Louise Fishman

Louise Fishman’s painted images have rested heavily upon her own personal, political and cultural experiences since the 1960s. She began her career as a staunch feminist after moving to New York in 1965, creating loosely gridded compositions before seeking out material-oriented installations and sculpture in the late 1960s. Her seminal “Angry Women” series from 1973 revived her painting practice and solidified her interest in layered artworks made by scraping and re-applying oil paint or tempera to create tumultuous, emotional compositions. These dense layers celebrate process, and were transformed again in 1988 after a trip to Eastern Europe. After visiting several concentration camps she added beeswax and ashes into her pigment, making them more sculptural and amplifying her surfances. By remaining loyal to her subjective experience, Fishman manipulated the traditions of gestural abstraction for her own feminine outlook. Her work is a step toward rebalancing the male-dominated art historical discourse with poignant perspective and the relentless evolution of her practice.

Fishman has exhibited at galleries and institutions including Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, New Hampshire, Whitney Musem of American Art, New York, Emily Harvey Foundation, Venice, The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, The Jewish Museum, New York, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, National Women’s Museum, Washington, D.C., MoMA PS 1, New York, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneous, Mexico City, and Baltimore Museum of Contemporary Art, Maryland, among many others. She participated in the Whitney Biennial in 2014, 1987, and 1973.